One common form of exercise includes aerobic exercise. Aerobic exercising is particularly helpful for weight control. Research consistently shows that regular physical activity, combined with healthy eating habits, is the most efficient and healthful way to control your weight.
The real benefits of aerobic exercise are achieved by increasing your heart rate and breathing hard for a period of time. During aerobic activity the body produces more energy and delivers more oxygen to the muscles. the heart beats faster and increases the blood flow to the muscles and then back to the lungs.
Aerobic means “with oxygen” and the body's aerobic system is the heart, lungs, blood vessels and muscles. The benefit of aerobic exercise is based on how well the body can deliver oxygen to the muscles and use it for energy. Regular aerobic workouts increase the ability to take in and transport oxygen and improve the body's aerobic capacity.
A good aerobic exercise program can help you live a longer, healthier life and enhance your well being. You get a multitude of benefits if you do your aerobic workout on a regular basis even if the intensity is low or short in duration.
Typically aerobic exercise is performed with equipment having an elastic element to enable repetitive motion, for example pulling and releasing an elastic band repetitively.
Adding vibrations or other stimulation sources (like EMS—Electrical Muscle Stimulation) to equipment used for aerobic physical exercise can increase the benefits of the workout. The body muscles react to the vibrations rather than increasing resistance to the motion being performed thus achieving training targets faster. Additionally, the vibrations increase the production of regenerative and repair hormones, improve blood circulation in skin and muscles, strengthen bone tissue, improve lymph drainage and increase the basal metabolic rate.
All this results in more strength, more speed, more stamina, rapid recovery of muscles and tissue, increased flexibility, mobility and coordination, anti-cellulitis, collagen improvement, and fat reduction.
The added value of the using vibrations and stimulation during training is to improve training quality and effectiveness, so the workout can be shortened and the trainee can recover faster. With the elderly and users with joint, back or other disorders, the vibration motion increases bone strength and helps build muscle, both of which help protect against the effects of osteoporosis. The massing effects greatly increase blood flow, and the repetitive stretching strengthens the joints and muscles of the trainee.
Another form of exercise includes aquatic exercise, wherein the exercise is performed in water using additional equipment that exploits the water to serve as an opposing force. Aquatic exercise has been found to be one of the best forms of exercise. The Water supports the trainee's body and alleviates most of the effects of gravity allowing the trainee to exercise specific muscle groups without stressing other areas of the body. The reduced physical strain on these other area allows the trainee to exercise for longer periods of time. The trainee is also able to exercise longer due to a lower and more stabilized body temperature resulting from contact with the water. Strain on the heart, muscles and ligaments are minimized while the benefits of physical activity are maximized.
Aquatic based physical therapy is most noticeably gaining popularity with the elderly, the obese, and the infirm, but still finds demand from people of all ranges of fitness and exercise regiment. There is a huge demand for an exercise modality which provides long-term health benefits and which can exist in the favorable environment of lower stress and freer movement.
The addition of a vibration source to equipment used for aquatic physical exercise increases the benefits of the workout. When training in aquatic conditions with equipment that vibrates in addition to acting against the water resistance, the trainee's body reacts independently to the vibrational acceleration rather than just to the resistance of the water.
When training with a vibrational source the trainee's body has to adapt even more to overcome the vibrations, thus achieving the training targets faster.
Another common form of exercise includes moving one's arm while grasping a weight. A barbell is a common form of weight for performing such exercise. A barbell includes an elongated member to be grasped by the user and weights attached on either end of the elongated member. Barbells are commonly used to train the arm muscles, for example the musculus bicep brachii and the musculus tricep brachii.
It has been found that exercising with a barbell that has an elongated member that vibrates increases the efficiency of training by transferring the vibrations to the muscles. Vibrational therapy of muscles is known to reduce the tendency to develop cramps, stimulate bone growth, increase production of endogenous cytokines, reduce joint pain and inflammation, increase bone fracture healing and can be used to treat osteoporosis.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,868,653 to Heinz Klasen the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, describes a vibrating barbell that has a damping material interposed between the barbell bar and the weights attached to the ends of the barbell to prevent the weights from being subject to the vibrations. This increases the efficiency of the delivery of the vibrations to the muscles and reduces energy consumption of the motor producing the vibrations. The dampening material is provided as a wavy leaf spring having a ring shape that surrounds the barbell bar in an attempt to reduce transmission of the vibrations to the weights. Without the dampening material the vibrations would be shared by the weights that generally have a large mass. The lack of isolation of the masses would reduce the effectiveness of providing vibrations to the muscles and require that the vibration source work harder.